Quantitative accident analysis on two different bioethanol production plant / Muhammad Saber Khairunnizam ... [et al.]

The purpose of this study is to examine the expected percentage of fatalities caused by three significant equipment mishaps at a recently built facility in Selangor, Malaysia. This study investigated the possibility of (1) various events occurring in terms of toxicity, thermal radiation, and overpressure, and (2) the percentage of fatalities resulting from the release of chemical mixtures from two ethanol plants: the reference plant (Plant 1) and Plant 2. The major equipment includes a combustor reactor operating at 700 °C and 1 bar for both Plants 1 and 2, a gasification reactor operating at 700 °C (Plant 1) and 900 °C (Plant 2) at 20 bar, and a bioreactor operating at 37 °C and 1 bar for both Plants 1 and 2. To model the process and determine the mass density, mass fraction, and volume fraction of the mixture, Aspen Plus software was utilized. ALOHA and MARPLOT software were used to compute the quantity of toxicity, heat radiation, overpressure, and the affected area. The main equipment comprises a combination of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, ethanol, ethanoic acid, and water, with water considered non-harmful. The release of a chemical mixture was postulated and simulated using three-hole size scenarios: 10 mm, 25 mm, and 160 mm. The findings indicated that Plant 2 experienced the highest percentage of fatalities, 86.77%, resulting from the ethanol fireball incident during nighttime through a 25 mm leak.